Black Dog of Bungay under study

Professor Sherwood poses at a gate in Bungay, Suffolk

by Valerie Sprague BBC News Online

For centuries stories have been told about a large and deadly black hound with glowing eyes which can appear and disappear at will.

The legendary Black Dog of Bungay allegedly appeared in a Suffolk church in a burst of lightning in 1577, and the phantom has found its way into countless frightening tales.

A psychology professor at University College in Northampton studies them because he claims to have seen a similar "animal ghost" with his own eyes.

Dr Simon Sherwood told BBC News Online that he first became interested in the paranormal when as a child, he saw a snarling black dog in his house in Spalding, Lincolnshire.

'Old Shuck'

He said his parents were not convinced by his tale, but when he later read a similar account in a newspaper, he believed that his experience had been real.

The Black Dog legend is not confined to Bungay - in Norfolk and parts of East Anglia it is known as Old Shuck, Black Shuck, and Shucky-Dog.

The professor said the most recent sighting came from the United States, when a man walking near a cemetery in Connecticut last summer reported the sight of a headless apparition resembling the Black Dog of Bungay.

St Mary's Church in Bungay: the scene of one report

Over the years, there has been speculation about the phantom "hell hounds"; some have called them an animal manifestation of a supernatural being, or the spirit of a dog which had suffered a cruel death.

Dr Sherwood said there is no one explanation for the sightings: "Some of them could be big cats, or dogs".

"Historically, parents might have passed on tales meant to keep children from approaching rabid dogs or areas such as cemeteries", he said.

And he added that "it is possible that graverobbers would make up stories to keep people away".

Common archetype

One explanation Dr Sherwood favours is that the ghostly dog is a hallucination deriving from a common archetype, since sightings have been reported from Scotland to the Isle of Man, Scandinavia and France.

"This could explain the similar appearance of sightings in different locales", he said.

The creature has achieved notoriety in Bungay; an image of the dog appears on the town coat of arms, and the football club is called the Black Dogs.

Though it is hard to say whether the black dog will ever be proved to be a hallucination, an escaped zoo jaguar, or the effect of too many ghost stories on the imagination, the professor said he will continue to collect stories of sightings from around the world.